End of the world stories are very popular in science fiction. If only the problem was that small!

Captain-First-Rank Tessa Hallowell stood before the mirror and cast a critical eye over the black-and-silver uniform that hugged her svelte form. It was not vanity that caused her to switch the mirror camera from viewpoint to viewpoint, but rather a desire to make the proper initial impression on her newly acquired prisoners. The war council had entrusted her with one of the most important missions of the impending attack and she was determined not to fail them in the slightest detail.

Having a.s.sured herself that her uniform was spotless and wrinkle free, she turned her attention to thebody within. The face was pretty enough, she supposed, with high cheekbones and a mouth that fell too easily into a pout. Her eyes were her best feature, emerald green and expressive, but as hard as diamond when she wanted them to be. The blonde hair was cut short in order not to interfere with the helmet seal of her s.p.a.ce armor. The body was muscular, without being manly; properly curved, but without the excess flesh that some men found attractive. There were many planets in the galaxy where Tessa Hallowell would be considered beautiful--and, of course, an equal number where her large framed blondeness was little more than a curiosity.

She smiled as she scanned the mirror one last time. At 28, she was the youngest captain in the fleet and only one of two women commanding starcruisers. It had taken a great deal of effort and not a little political maneuvering to achieve her current status and everything she had worked for was about to culminate in triumph.

Finished with her inspection, she called out, "Yeoman!"

"Yes, Captain?" came the immediate reply from the overhead speaker.

"Have my gig made ready. I'll go over to the observatory now."

"Aye aye, Ma'am."

She picked up the anachronistic helmet that the Hegemonic Navy had adopted for its official headgear and strapped it on. Moments later she was striding purposefully around the main circ.u.mferential corridor of the busy star cruiser, acknowledging salutes from the crewmen she pa.s.sed.

The salutes were as crisp and perfect as any to be seen at the Galactic Guard's academy on New Rome, an indication that her pride was shared by those who served her. Two corridors later and a quick fall down a dropshaft brought her to one of the bays where they kept the auxiliary craft.

The gig launched into the great blackness less than two minutes later. As they cleared the cruiser, Tessa glanced up and suppressed a sharp intake of breath as the galaxy came into view. From her current position some ten thousand light years above the plane of the galaxy's equator, the Milky Way was a vast river of subdued fire frozen against the utter blackness of s.p.a.ce. The great pinwheel was so close that it seemed three dimensional, yet sufficiently distant that its foreshortened spiral form was easily discerned. Next to the galaxy's glory, the other patches of light in the ebon sky dimmed to near invisibility.

The Hegemonic Fleet StarcruiserWarwind had been six thousand hours in transit to reach her objective located high above the galactic spiral. For two-thirds of a standard year they had slipped upward from where humanity's million-plus stars floated among a hundred billion unexplored brethren, climbing nearly to the halo of ancient blue suns that englobed the flattened disk and bulging central ma.s.s of the galaxy.

Warwind's objective was the Extragalactic Tachyon Observatory, the largest and most costly observing tool ever created by human beings. For a starship to approach the universe's premier tachyon instrument by stealth required careful piloting and not a little luck. For eight long months,Warwind 's crew had monitored the superlight communications bands, searching for any hint that the observatory had noticed the tachyons that streamed continuously out of their ship's engines as it climbed ever higher above the galaxy. For all of that time, Tessa Hallowell had lived with the tension brought about by fear of discovery, tension made worse by the knowledge that it would only take but a single warning to alert New Rome and ensure the destruction of the Hegemonic fleet.

Nor was lack of an alarm necessarily evidence that they had not been spotted. Even in these non-military times, a great deal of comm traffic was in code--whether originated by computers,diplomats, or merely commercial concerns eager to keep their monied secrets. Also, the warning could have been disguised, either as an innocuous message or by being buried in the astronomical data the observatory transmitted back to the galaxy round the clock. A single nanosecond pulse was all that was needed to send the Galactic Guard streaming away from their bases and toward the worlds of the Hegemony.

After eight months of worry, action had come as an anticlimax. Warwind had closed to within a hundred thousand kilometers of the great observatory before launching her strike boats. Her marines had grounded on the hull without incident and then proceeded to break in at a dozen different places. They had been met, not by armed defenders, but rather by a staff more bewildered than resisting. The sheep had submitted meekly as soon as they found armored wolves in their midst.

With surprise total and her victory complete, Captain Hallowell had sent the coded words so ancient that few knew the language that had originated them. "Tora, Tora, Tora!" had whisked toward Hegemonic Headquarters on a beam of modulated tachyons, to be instantly responded to with, "Make your preparations, but hold for orders. H-hour is imminent!"

Suddenly, a tiny sphere appeared in the great blackness before them. With the galaxy at her back, it seemed lost in an empty ebon sea. It expanded quickly and turned into a large habitat globe, almost mundane in its ordinariness. There were literally tens of millions of these islands of hospitality scattered throughout human s.p.a.ce. Most orbited yellow suns that emulated (to a greater or lesser degree) the warm glow of Father Sol. Others bathed in the ruddy rays of great stars the color of old coals, or flashed with the actinic blue-white of nature's supergiants, or orbited close to many of the universe's countless midget suns. Still others floated where every star was a dimensionless pinpoint and only the most sensitive instruments could detect the pull of distant gravity. The standardized habitat modules were used wherever men and women found themselves enveloped by vacuum. Out here there was nothing to reflect off the white hull save the suffuse glow emanating from the Milky Way. Even so, the contrast with the black backdrop and its myriad faint smudges of light made it seem as though the habitat globe was illuminated by some internal fire.

The habitat was only the most visible portion of the observatory. Dispersed across a billion kilometers of surrounding s.p.a.ce were the sensors that collectively made up the tachyon "array." Invisible though the sensors were, they were the reason Tessa's ship had been dispatched to this distant outpost.

Here, high above the galactic swirl, conditions were nearly perfect for "seeing" the superlight particles created in the nuclear fires that burned at the heart of every star. Out here where s.p.a.ce was virtually flat, where cosmic gas and dust were nearly nonexistent, tachyon astronomers could watch the universe in real time, unfettered by the snail like crawl that is light speed.

Nor were they limited to observing natural phenomena. The engines of starships burned bright with waste tachyons that were instantaneously flung toward the farthest reaches of the firmament. Like their sublight cousins, the neutrinos, tachyons were virtually unaffected by pa.s.sage through normal matter.

Thus, starships appeared as tiny moving stars to the great instrument at the edge of the galaxy. It was the tachyon telescope's ability to track ships that had caused the Hegemony's high command to dispatch Warwind to this most distant of all humanity's installations.

The s.p.a.ce gig floated through the observatory habitat's main ship lock and was immediately winched to a tie down pad within the large cylindrical hangar bay. As soon as the gig was secure, its flanks were buffeted by a hurricane of expanding air as atmosphere was released into the bay. Tessa unstrapped and floated toward the midships airlock.Sergeant Major Cochrane ofWarwind 's marines waited in the hangar bay with a small squad to welcome his captain. Despite the lack of gravity and his s.p.a.ce armor, Cochrane managed to look as though he were standing on the parade ground back at headquarters.

"Situation report, Sergeant Major!"

"The habitat is secure, Captain," the sergeant's amplified voice said from somewhere around his belt. "We control communications and are continuing to transmit routine messages and scientific data.

We have rounded up the observatory staff and have them in the messhall, all except the headman. He's waiting for you in his office."

"No stragglers?"

"No, ma'am. We tapped into their roster and have them all identified by face and retina scan.

There are twenty-eight of them. Ten scientists, twelve a.s.sistants, and six housekeeping and maintenance types."

She nodded. It would be even more crowded aboardWarwind on the return voyage than on the outbound leg, but that could not be helped. A warship was not a liner. Even with every free bit of cubic crammed with food and other consumables when they had launched; this voyage was straining their resources to the limit. They would naturally restock from the observatory's supplies of foodstuffs and oxygen, but even so, by the time they returned to the galaxy, ship's crew and prisoners would be on short rations.

"What is the name of the head astronomer?"

"Senior Academecian Trevor Vannick, Captain. I must warn you that he is not a happy individual."

"Did he resist when you captured him?"

"Other than cuss us out in about four languages? No, ma'am!"

"Conduct me to him."

"Yes, ma'am."

Cochrane gave a silent order over his helmet commlink and his party immediately a.s.sumed convoy positions. Tessa grasped Cochrane's equipment harness and let him tow her toward the axis hatchway using his suit's maneuvering thrusters.

The habitat's interior was as nondescript and common as its exterior. Here and there, the inhabitants had attempted to personalize it with pictures and potted plants. Like all such installations and every ship of s.p.a.ce, the place smelled of people and machinery forced into too close proximity.

Academician Vannick's office was just one hatch out of many that lined the outer curve of the main equatorial pa.s.sageway. It would have been indistinguishable from all the others save for the two Warwind marines who flanked it. The hatchway retracted into the bulkhead at their approach, and Tessa pulled herself hand over hand into the office beyond.

Vannick was cadaverously thin, with wisps of white hair that floated akimbo in microgravity. He glanced up as the hatch opened and watched his captor make her way to the anchor frame in front of the desk. There was a look of barely controlled rage on his face.

"Are you the leader of this band of hooligans?" he demanded as she wrapped her legs through theanchor frame.

"I am Captain Tessa Hallowell, commanding Hegemonic Star CruiserWarwind ."

"You're from the Hegemony of Stars?" Vannick asked, incredulous.

"I am and you, sir, are my prisoner."

Tessa could see the astronomer's expression change as he processed this new bit of information.

The Hegemony had begun life as little more than a regional lobbying group, an a.s.sociation formed by the new, raw star systems at the fringes of human s.p.a.ce to blunt the influence of the older, more civilized systems that cl.u.s.tered around ancient Sol. There had been talk of secession for generations. Lately the talk had turned serious. To find himself face to face with someone who claimed to represent the navy of a sovereign state told Vannick that the political situation was far worse than the news reports from New Rome indicated. The Communion of Humanity, with its capital at New Rome, had not had a compet.i.tor for almost 200 years, not since the Antares Republic had submitted following a brief, b.l.o.o.d.y war in the 28th century, in fact.

"The Hegemony has seceded?"

"It is I who ask the questions here, Professor," Tessa said coldly. Onboard her ship, such a response would have halted all protest instantly. Rather than quiet the astronomer, her rebuke only drove him to fury.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, have you people seceded?"

Tessa frowned and made a conscious effort to hold her temper. In general, scientists did not respond well to authority and her greatest need was for a quick, orderly evacuation of the station. She made a quick calculation that she would complete her mission most expeditiously with the appearance of being reasonable. There would be plenty of time later for the professor and his people to learn who commanded.

"Not yet," she answered with deceptive calm. "However, military action to bring about a situation where we can declare our independence is imminent."

"You can't! This is the worst possible time..." Vannick's protest died in his throat. A new, horrible thought had occurred to him. "What are you people doing here?"

"My fleet will soon be in action against the Galactic Guard. I have been ordered to ensure that the gigi 's do not use this observatory against us."

"How could they possibly do that?"

"With your sensors, you can track ship movements. That is a capability the guard will find most useful after the commencement of hostilities."

Vannick's response was a rude noise.

"Do you deny that your instrument detects starships?"

"No, of course not. Interference from ships movingftl often corrupts our data. In fact, we do everything in our powernot to detect your precious ships."

"But you could if you wanted to?"The senior astronomer nodded his head reluctantly. His wisps of hair moved as though alive in the air currents. "We could, of course. However, the technique is not terribly useful. For one thing, with only a single instrument, we have no ability to triangulate observations. What good is it for me to watch your ship cross my field of view if I have no third dimension with which to pinpoint your location? Do you think the guard has enough ships to search every kilometer along a constantly changing position vector some ten thousand light years long?"

"We are less concerned with the tactical utility of this observatory than its strategic implications in the long term. Up until now, we have taken great care to mask the movement of our fleets in order to preserve the element of surprise. After the battle is joined, we will no longer have that luxury. Our ships must to return to their bases periodically for refit and resupply. Given time and sufficient observations, the guard will be able to pinpoint the location of our bases. We can't risk that."

The worlds of the Hegemony were well known to the Galactic Guard, and nearly defenseless against a determined s.p.a.ce attack. Likewise, the worlds that circled the central suns of human s.p.a.ce were known to the Hegemonic Navy. What kept everyone safe was the ancient principle of "balance of terror." So long as the rebels maintained a credible striking force able to revenge gigi terror raids, then Tessa Hallowell's family on Askar would remain relatively safe.

For twenty years, the Hegemonic Navy had secretly built bases on unexplored worlds circling out-of-the-way suns. A base whose location is unknown cannot be attacked, which left the rebel fleet free to devote its full efforts to defeating the guard intheir home systems. All that would change, of course, if the Extragalactic Tachyon Observatory were able to track the Hegemony's ships. Even with deceptive maneuvering, there would be no hiding the number of ships that stopped in supposedly uninhabited star systems. Once those systems were identified, the Galactic Guard would concentrate overwhelming force there to quickly end the rebellion.

After long seconds, Vannick cleared his throat and asked, "If you were truly interested in the long term strategic outlook, you would call off your attack."

"Why is that?"

There was a brief struggle on his face as a variety of emotions raged within him. Finally, he said, "Never mind. I suppose that you want us to track the guard's ships for you rather than vice versa."

Tessa Hallowell shook her head. "No, my orders are to evacuate your people and then deny the use of this observatory to the enemy."

"Deny how?"

"I am to vaporize this habitat and destroy as much as possible of the sensor array before returning to the galaxy."

For an instant, she worried that he would have a heart attack. The already pale face turned ashen and his whole body shuddered as though stricken. When finally he regained the use of his voice, the elderly astronomer croaked, "You can't!"

"I can, sir, and I will. I have my orders."

"What if I give you my solemn word as to our neutrality in the coming war?"

"Not good enough."

"We'll give guarantees. You can rig a bomb to blow us all up at the first hint we've betrayed you.""The first hint will come when the Galactic Guard slags down fleet headquarters. No, Professor, I am sorry. This observatory will be destroyed."

Vannick hesitated for long seconds, and then sighed heavily. When he spoke, it was with the air of a man who has struggled with his conscience and come to a difficult decision. "Before you destroy the observatory, Captain, there is something you must see. I think you will agree that it places all of this in a different light.

"A very different light, indeed!"

Without waiting for her answer, Vannick slipped his restraint and clambered across the desktop like a monkey at feeding time. She considered having the Cochrane halt him, but decided that the quicker whatever game he was playing was over, the quicker they could begin the evacuation. Instead of ordering Vannick stopped, Tessa ordered the sergeant major and his guards to follow them. The small party swarmed along the circ.u.mferential corridor, then turned upward into a radial corridor that led to the interior of the habitat.

Within a few dozen meters, she found herself floating in a large spherical s.p.a.ce. A platform with several workstations hovered at the sphere's center, held there by some invisible means. Vannick immediately kicked off and floated the ten meters to the platform. Tessa ordered the guards to station themselves at the entrance hatch and followed him. She anch.o.r.ed herself beside the astronomer, who was powering up various controls.

"What now?"

"Watch," he said, cryptically.

A moment later, she was no longer inside the featureless gray sphere. Instead, she hovered in deep s.p.a.ce with the galaxy spread out below her and the infinite universe above. The view was the same as she had had from her gig, except the stars were a bright kaleidoscope of colors that bore little resemblance to the pale radiance they exhibited outside. Overhead and behind them were dim patches of colored light that represented the far galaxies.

"A holographic display from the tachyon array," the astronomer explained. "You are seeing the galaxy not in visible light, but rather, by the superlight particles that stream out of the interiors of stars."

"Why the false colors?"

"They denote particle energy. Red is for the slowest tachyons, blue for the fastest."

"I thought tachyon velocity was infinite."

"Close enough to it that it doesn't matter for most purposes," Vannick agreed. "Even the slowest can cross the known universe in less than an hour. However, if they were infinitely fast, there would be no way to detect them. They would appear to be everywhere at once, with no means of telling their direction. As it is, we require more computer power than most planets to interpret the readings we receive from the array."

"Surely this isn't what you brought me here to see?"

"Right. Let's take a little journey." He pa.s.sed his open palm over one of the controls as he spoke a series of coordinates. Suddenly the sky changed around them."The galaxy is only one of billions, you know. Galaxies are arranged in gravitationally bound groups called cl.u.s.ters, and cl.u.s.ters of galaxies are themselves arranged in supercl.u.s.ters, and so on virtuallyad infinitum."

"I excelled in astronomy at school, Professor," she said acidly, not knowing where he was going with all of this. She watched while the universe rotated and the galaxy, which had below them, began to shrink precipitously. In less than a second, the Milky Way was just another hazy patch of light on the ebon vault of the viewdome. Other patches streamed past her until one particular patch began to grow.

As it grew, the smudge of light split and became numerous tiny smudges, which in turn grew until each developed a tiny shape of its own. When the expansion halted, it was as though some careless giant had sown the sky with hundreds of tiny spirals, each oriented at random.

"This is the Virgo cl.u.s.ter of galaxies, which is the gravitational center of our own local supercl.u.s.ter.

It is about 70 million light years from here. It contains some 250 large galaxies and about 1000 smaller ones."

Tessa felt a momentary pang as her mind struggled with the scale of the universe, something for which the human brain is singularly unsuited. After seven centuries of star travel, humanity had visited less than 0.1 percent of the suns in the home galaxy. As for the Andromeda Galaxy, humanity's closest neighbor, it remained unattainably distant. On the viewdome stretched hundreds of galaxies, many far larger than the Milky Way, all crammed into a portion of the sky that could be covered by a thumbnail held at arm's length.

Nor was this particular galactic cl.u.s.ter unique. There were galactic cl.u.s.ters everywhere one looked in the sky, so many that the astronomers barely paid attention to anything as small as a mere galaxy. The entire fifteen billion light year diameter of the universe was so filled with galaxies that on a large enough scale they had the appearance of being the foam flung skyward by some overpowering violent surf.

There were more galaxies in the sky than grains of sand on a beach. It was enough to give even a starship captain a feeling of inferiority.

The Virgo cl.u.s.ter was so large, the number of galaxies within it so numerous, that it took a dozen seconds for her to notice the small violet sphere in the crosshairs of the viewdome's coordinate display.

"What is that?" she asked, wondering if it were part of the display.

"That, Captain Hallowell," the astronomer said heavily, "is the reason why the Hegemony must not secede from the Communion of Humanity. More importantly, it is the reason why you must not destroy this observatory!"